A Polish man underwent the first-ever emergency face transplant after an incident with a stone cutting machine; he walked out of the hospital only 11 weeks later.
The man is already able to see, breathe, and even eat, ABC News reported.
The stonecutter left the 33-year old man, known as Grzegorz, with a crushed jaw and a face so badly damaged it could not be salvaged.
"My speech isn't clear, but it's really important that it is there," the transplant recipient said during a news conference. "I know it's still a long way."
The work accident left Grzegorz susceptible to infections. While most patients prepare for face transplants years ahead of time, doctor's decided to operate on Grzegorz after only three weeks as the patient's condition was deteriorating.
"Usually, the recipients have to wait between one and seven years," Dr. Adam Maciejewski, head of the team of surgeons at the Cancer Center and Institute of Oncology, the only facility licensed to perform face transplants in Poland, said. "For obvious reasons, we had to act much faster, as we were saving this man's life."
Another recent face transplant patient was Richard Norris, a 38-year-old U.S. man, The Telegraph reported.
He needed his "teeth, upper and lower jaw, a part of the tongue and all of the tissue from the scalp to the base of [his] neck" replaced.
Norris' surgery was successful; he even gained back the majority of feeling in his face.
"When I was disfigured, just walking the sidewalk, I was surprised that more people didn't walk into telephone poles or break their necks to stare at me," Norris said. "Now ... there's no one paying attention. Unless they know me personally, they don't know I am a face transplant patient. That right there is the goal we had."
One possible complication associated with transplants is rejection. Survivors of the operation must take immunosuppressant drugs for the rest of their lives in order to keep the body from rejecting the new tissue.
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